From the fidget’s diary… how is it like to lie in bed day. and another one. and one after. and…

Lately, I’ve read the article for carers advising them how to lay their loved ones/their patients in bed after brain stroke. I bet it’s very important and extremely useful article, but to tell the truth, I haven’t seen this advice implemented in hospitals. I have an impression that convenience of overworked carers is usually more important than putting the elbow in the right angle.

But! What do I know? Actually, my own stroke spared me and even the Times of severe, movement disability gave me some freedom. Don’t mistake it as an ability to walk, dance and run marathons, it wasn’t like that, but come on, conscious and tied to your bed is bad.

I will not tell you how sick person should lie in the hospital bed, just can tell you how it feels like.

Lying in bed hurts. Hurts so much. EVERYTHING HURTS. Sometimes I feel like informing people that my ass hurts (if it really hurts), but it really does. If you have to lay down still, it just hurts you.

The temperature of your environment is ALWAYS too high or too low. Never just ok. I swear. Your duvet never is just right. constant uncovering or covering yourself is your only way to handle the discomfort.

when I was laying down I felt as if my hearing was much better than normally. You hear every whisper, every machine from the hospital, every step of a nurse. At least you think so. It’s tiring, and you just want to have the silence to have proper rest, good night sleep. Unfortunately, I learned to ask for sleeping pills after the second stroke. Before I had spent plenty of sleepless nights, listening to the noises of the hospital. Finally, I learned that it helps me to survive.

when you are plugged into all these monitors and machines which check whether you’re alive or not, it’s extremely easy to unplug yourself. By accident, of course. Sometimes it looked very funny. For example, after my heart procedure, I wasn’t on nothing like intensive care, just ordinary room, but I had all these portable monitors on me. at some point, I knew that some of the cables got unplugged. but it took hours to get attention from nurses. I don’t know what went wrong there, but I figured that if I had some complications then, I would be in a really big trouble. Of course, the nurse was screaming at me when she came to plug me again, but I was too confused to care. I was just 3 months after stroke, and I still had problems with reality.

if I had power, I would have always changed my position. no matter in which position nurses and family tried to put me.

the rule is simple: Strokie should lie down in such way to make affected side active. but you know. rules are one thing, reality second one. As far as I remember I was making so much effort to use my non-affected hand. I could do twists, tumbles, just to use my right hand. I didn’t know anything about the importance of activating left one. To tell the truth, even if I did know, I wouldn’t have had been so much concerned. I didn’t know anything about the impact of stroke on one’s life. so I wouldn’t care.

When you lie down for a long time the toilet thing starts to be your obsession. I’m sure that diaper, urinal or catheter isn’t a dream of any adult person, it’s a necessity. It’s not comfortable, at the beginning you feel ashamed… The catheter, in the end, isn’t that bad, let’s say, it’s more inconvenient than annoying. But when you have a diaper changed for the first time you think that you’d rather die than have this experience. I did, anyway. You dream of standing up and going to the toilet by yourself so much, that it’s difficult to imagine. If you hadn’t cursed your illness before, that was the first moment to do it.

You can think that I’m exaggerating, but it’s nothing like that. Lying in bed for a longer period of time isn’t a holiday. Few Times I heard that it’s like a rest. For me, it wasn’t. And it isn’t. And, probably, will never be like a rest. Even hospital pig (my hospital toy to hug) doesn’t help.

Now you know how it feels. At least how I feel about lying in bed… ;))